Hard Drive Problems

[Guest]

Upgrading from Win 98 to XP pro. Went through the first time and had problems
when formatting the hard drive. It took forever so I shut it down. Now I
cannot format the 2nd partition of the hard drive. I cannot seemed to be able
to format the D: drive. It shows that is an Extended DOS and FAT16. I tried
to format it inside Win 98 but it crashes. I tried using format D: at the dos
prompt and it comes back stating Invalid Device Parameters for Device Driver.
How can I format the D: drive so that I can proceed with the installation of
XP Pro.

 

[Andre Da Costa]

Use the Windows XP installation to format the disk, the reason why it is
probably taking so long, it has to convert the FAT file system to NTFS file
system, which is more reliable.

Andre

 

[Guest]

The progress bar showed 0 % over a 10 hour period. Is this normal?

 

[G. Vaught]

No, that is not normal.

What I would do is remove any pertinent datafiles that may have been added
since your initial setup. If there isn't any, just redo the install by
conducting a clean install. Don't do a repair. When you create a multiple
partition only install Windows to C:. On the other partitions, don't reuse
the XP Setup CD to format, this will copy the Windows files to that drive
also. Take my word for it. After you boot up to Windows, then format your
other partions.

 

[Guest]

Okay. I will try it again and see how it goes. Any suggestions on how to
format the second drive to NTFS after the installation is done?

 

[Alex Nichol]

Use the Windows XP installation to format the disk, the reason why it is
probably taking so long, it has to convert the FAT file system to NTFS file
system, which is more reliable.

Will you stop giving bad advice based on not knowing? XP Setup does
not, and never has, converted FAT to NTFS

 

[Alex Nichol]

Upgrading from Win 98 to XP pro. Went through the first time and had problems
when formatting the hard drive. It took forever so I shut it down. Now I
cannot format the 2nd partition of the hard drive. I cannot seemed to be able
to format the D: drive. It shows that is an Extended DOS and FAT16. I tried
to format it inside Win 98 but it crashes. I tried using format D: at the dos
prompt and it comes back stating Invalid Device Parameters for Device Driver.
How can I format the D: drive so that I can proceed with the installation of
XP Pro.

Boot your Win98 startup floppy and use a run of its FDISK to delete the
second partition. If XP set out to make that itself, it may have done
so as an NTFS one, in which case the FDISK will need to 'Delete non-DOS
partition'. Then run the XP CD from the Win98. You have two choices:

In Install, leave the setting on Upgrade. That will upgrade the Win98
to XP in the same folder, backing up the Win98 files for an uninstall if
asked. You can later make a second partition in the free space under
the XP
or
Change to New Install. When it asks you to confirm where, hit ESC. You
can then select the now free space on the drive and make a new partition
for the XP setup to format as next stage: this will give you a 'dual
boot' between the two systems. Note that you will have the initial boot
in the Win98 one, so you must *not* subsequently just delete that or use
a SYS C: which will destroy the ability to get at the XP